"How are you doing today?"

How do you think I'm doing? Of course I'm not doing all that well or I wouldn't be here. I'd be rather having Lo-mein with a crispy spring roll at my favourite Chinese restaurant instead of spending my lunch time at a doctor's.

Not necessarily voiced aloud, this is what some people would feel like saying when they are posed with the ubiquitous question, one of the many which are only spoken and not meant. The answers are equally unreal and hardly do justice to the condition that the questionee is in when greetings are exchanged and questions asked between fellows who are doing it for the sake of it. (For sake of simplicity, I'll ignore the responses by prattlers and babblers who'll, without fail, throw up their life stories in front of you when asked how they were doing.)

Is there an escape from such triviality? Probably not. Infact it is not even trivial. The banality of such exchanges does not undermine their importance. It is required to respond whether you feel like it or not, with a shake of the head if not by words. A lack of response would surely put you in the path to being called crazy.

I read something, somewhere to the effect that "sanity is nothing but conformity to norms". People who make their own rules are technically crazy, unless of course they find a public appeal and following.

Thus insanity is not a person's state of mind, it is categorized by what others perceive about that individual.

So the moral of the story is that to avoid being insane follow the norms of the society and to avoid perceiving someone insane, step into her shoes.

However,a lot of us want to be different from the rest of the world and will continue to do so. Thus, insanity is eternal.

'rang de basanti' and a major digression

I watched this new Hindi movie over the weekend. And without giving away the whole story, it's a tale trying to interweave excerpts from the Indian freedom struggle led by a few youngsters with the current day collegiates trying to play their roles in a movie who ultimately resort to a radical approach to curb one specific political malfeasance.

The youngsters, viz. Azad, Bhagat Singh etc. belonged to the faction of those freedom fighters who wanted justice right away, through violence or otherwise unlike the Gandhian fighters, who fought through civil disobedience and non-violence. It is debatable whether the British rule's end was driven faster due to the Azad-like fighters or the Gandhians. Both factions are equally respected in India, though latter would set a precedent that is hardly followed today.

The Azad-ians used violence agains those who were responsible. Then came the world-war, where Kamakazes killed themselves to attack on the enemy troops.

Today, suicide bombings have gone a little further where most of the times the victims are innocent. People are charged guilty by association to a particular culture, country, relgion etc. In one such instance it is argued that this is a result of indifferent foreign policies by west towards the middle-east over a period of time.

Well, if foreign policies can result into suicide bombings it remains to be seen what repurcussions would violence against the innocent take us!!

name that drug

I missed some of what Ali G said but here's some of the street names of banned substances that he seems to know a lot about.
-the bionic; the bomb; the chronic; the sweet mary jane; the buddha; the method; the black; the sheep; the ganja; the maui-maui; the rocky; the pot; the shake; the rasta ...

Here's the link to the video:
Ali G on Drugs
Can you figure out the other names?

'another one bites the dust'

So here we are again, with India-Pak evenly poised to settle for another draw. Now-a-days it's just so frustrating that a test match would end up in a lame draw, unlike the years of yore where a lot more of them met the same fate. But then they neither had an ardent media to report every delivery (and chucks) and every wield of the willow, nor did they have a reactionist following of the game.

But since all that is in the annals, let's pick (a) fall guy(s) for the current fiasco.

Blame it on -

1) PCB: It seems that the Lahore curator, who prepared the pitch that was flatter than a carrom board and smoother than Angelina Jolie's legs, was rushed to Faislabad to undo what he had done at Lahore. I mean C'mon!! It's like telling Saddam that you screwed up Iraq so here's Kuwait - go and rule. Well, I thought a team like Pakistan would have several curators and wouldn't place all eggs in one basket. But PCB's reputation precedes itself. It is second only to the country's govt.'s/regime's reputation. At the end Shaharyar Khan would defend it and blame its actions on weather.

2)Curator: Let's say the weather was a factor, which infact might have been the case for a little change in the behaviour of the pitch. But people please!! Don't you know that you've this weather every freaking year and if you didn't have an experience making a decent pitch during this time then frankly you should be working in a salon - shaving Angelina's legs. Bangladesh would have been ideal invitee for such pitches. They can get their confidence up and still Pakistan would have a chance of taking 20 wickets.

3) Players: This is far reaching but may be Inzi & Co wanted to keep their record on the positive side, i.e. at least not losing the series after the England triumph and avoiding another home series advantage like last time when India visited them. With a little green on the pitch and available moisture, Indian seamers would presumably succeed over comparatively swing-less Shoaib and Sami while making a pitch that dances would again tilt in Kumble-Bhajji's favour. So only option remainining is make it where Butt's butt stands on the ground all day long when he bats.

4)Weather: Who am I gonna blame for weather? No really? But anyways, I think the weather is a red-herring. Blame # 3 holds strong within my thoughts.

That ends the conspiracy theories.

weekend sports & monday morning blues!

So here's a toast to monday! Come again another day!

Looking through my watery eyes, with veins turned red within, after staring at all that day and night sports mania going on - the India-Pak series, the VB series, the NFL playoffs and the Australian Open. Damn! I'm busy!

Why do I see the blues through my crimson eyes defies me! Is it because I'm too drained out after watching all the excitement provided by the spectator and contact sports? Is it because I can't get enough of it? I suspect the latter to be true with blurry visions of -
Rothliesbergers and Hasselbacks getting mauled by line backing trains; Sharapova-Hantuchova glam-slams; a spectalur 5 set angle-shot Hrbaty-Davidenko extravaganza; an highly inelegant and quintessential Dhoni-innings, characterized by some clean and raw pulls and lofts frenzy.

Too much sporting excitement? I think not !!

to be or not to be...

Well! Here I am!

I was thinking about "slogging" (that's my personal term for blogging) for a long time but procastrination has made it possible only today!

Not that I've much to say right now but I was wondering about the merits or demerits of slogging. Now that I'm here it just seems that slogging wouldn't be fun if no one read it and more so if someone I knew didn't read it. But then again, if someone I knew did read it, he/she might find out something they don't want to know (or shouldn't be told)... and of course slogging wouldn't be interesting without juicy stuff, now would it?

"To be or not to be?"- that's the question. May be I'll just use aliases, la la lands, inuendos, indirect references, misnomers etc.. but whatever...